Moscow bans ceremony honouring victims of Stalin’s Terror

Organisers of event where names of victims are recited say withdrawal of permission is outrageous

Moscow city authorities have refused permission for an annual ceremony honouring victims of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, according to Russia’s most prominent human rights group.

Memorial, the country’s oldest rights group, has held a 12-hour ceremony every year on 29 October for the past 11 years. Hundreds of people read out names of those killed during Stalin-era repressions at a memorial in Lubyanka Square, outside the headquarters of the current security service and its Stalin-era predecessors. Historians estimate about a million people perished in Stalin’s Terror, also known as the Great Purge, in the 1930s.